One Way or Another Supreme Court Will Eventually Rule on 2/3 for Taxes

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While everyone is focused on the House Democrats’ lawsuit challenging the 18 year-old voter-approved supermajority requirement for tax increases, a new lawsuit filed today could be the one that actually forces the Supreme Court to finally rule on this issue. As reported by The Tacoma News Tribune:

“The roll-your-own tobacco industry said this morning that they are filing a lawsuit against a measure that would tax their product like retail cigarettes.

Roll-your-own machines let customers produce a carton of cigarettes for about half the cost of what they’d pay for those sold at retail stores. A law passed earlier this year would begin taxing these cigarettes like retail smokes, as of July 1.

The group filing the lawsuit argues that this ‘raises taxes,’ and therefore should have required a 2/3 vote to pass, due to Initiative 1053.”

There is of course a better alternative to leaving 18 years of state policy and repeated voter support of the requirement to secure a supermajority vote to raise taxes in the hands of Judges: Lawmakers providing voters the opportunity to consider a constitutional amendment.

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Jason Mercier is Director of the Center for Government Reform at Washington Policy Center. He serves on the Executive Committee of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force and is the private sector chairman of ALEC’s Fiscal Federalism Working Group. He is a contributing editor of the Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News, a columnist for SeattlePostGlobe.org, serves on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and was an advisor to the 2002 Washington State Tax Structure Committee. In June 2010, Governor Gregoire appointed Jason as WPC’s representative on her Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Panel. Jason holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Washington State University.